Fisher Price Rainforest Musical Baby Gym and Vtech Baby Walker review

I have always been a bit skeptical about plastic electronic toys that make sounds. One for its non-natural material, another for its repetitive songs and sounds (which mainly irritates adult not the kids!).

We received the Fisher Price Rainforest baby gym and the Vtech baby walker as gifts for our little one when she was 4 and 11 month old respectively. These two products have changed my perception on toys as we do see quite some benefits brought to my little one. I know there are an unlimited amount of toys that you can buy and every single toy is an investment in your little one’s development. That is also why I’d like to share our experience with these toys with other parents.

Fisher Price Rainforest Baby Gym

Suitable for different development stages

Depends on your baby's age and motor development skills, you could put your baby in different positions on the play mat. For younger kids, you might choose a lying-on-the-back or –on-the-tummy position. When on their back, they could do some stretching exercise by reaching up to the toys hanging on the arch.

Tummy Training

The mat was in particularly a very helpful tool in entertaining my little one in her daily tummy training, where het head is naturally lifted up, attracted by all the simulating colours and the small mirror in the front of the mat which could see from a tummy-on-mat position.

Seated Position on the Baby Gym

When the baby is strong enough to sit, you might like to encourage them sitting on the mat while playing with the hanging toys on the arch. It was a precious moment to see how your little one learns to balance in seated position while trying to grab the hanging toys. On the arch hang a soft toy and a plastic one with a turnable ball in the centre, which could make 2 different melodies when the ball is turned forward and backward respectively.

Washable

I particularly like the fact that the mat is easy to clean. Fabric parts can be washed in a washing machine while the plastic part is also easy cleanable.

Room for improvement

The toys hanging on the arch is connected with Velcro, which I could interchange the positioning of them, but that's it. Would be great to have spare parts, like another soft plunge toy with different texture for parents to 'refresh' the mat periodically and keep it attractive to kids.

Price-wise it is not the cheapest baby play mat available in the market but definitely not the most fancy and pricy one. Most probably we would also have opted for the same one shall we not have received it.

Vtech Baby Walker

We have already done some research on baby walkers and would like to get one as the one-year-old birthday gift for my girl. At the end she got it as a gift from her grandparents, which turn out to be one of her favourite toys!

Speed control lock

Multi-functional

The baby walker is very compact. Surely it is a tool to help babies to walk and stand up. Our girl could already stand up in her crib at age of 8 months and started walking with assistance at 10 months. With the walker, she could go freely in the house and she simply looked very proud. Do note that there is 2 speed intervals that you can control and we have already been using the slower one. The quicker one is still to wild for our little adventurer.

Next to the walking function is the activity board. My little one spent a lot of time playing with the telephone, peekaboo as we as the flashing buttons (which plays songs and says words when pressed). The board could also be detached from the walker as well.

Clear pronunciations

I could still remember the unclearness of the words coming out of my toys when I was young (so some 20 years ago). I was expected the same with any sound-making toys but I must say that the pronunciation of both words and song lyrics are quite clear and easy understandable, which is important as kids do imitate from it.

Room for improvement

There are only 2 volume levels that you can choose from and we always use the lower one. It is definitely clear enough for indoor usage. It would be more flexible if there were a volume adjustment button.